2020-04-01_Total_Film

puzzle piece

JASONSEGELGUIDESUSTHROUGHDISPATCHESFROMELSEWHERE

How did Dispatches come about?

I wanted to figure out what I was going

to do with the rest of my career. This

show in a lot of ways is me throwing

down the gauntlet, reclaiming who I was

when I wrote Forgetting Sarah Marshall

[ 2008 ]. I ended that movie with a

lavish Dracula puppet musical because

I thought it was great, and I wasn’t

thinking about strategy. I was sort of

saying, ‘This is who I am.’ That’s what

this show is, at 40. It’s the grown-up

version of that.

What was the original inspiration?

I saw a documentary [The Institute]

about this art experience [‘The Games

Of Nonchalance’] that happened in San

Francisco in 2012. I think it hit me at

the right time and I probably reacted

disproportionately to the occasion, but I

just remember being alive and fired up –

this is what I need to write about. And I

got a hold of the creator [Jeff Hull] of the

real experiment and he hung up on me!

I told him my idea, and he said, ‘This is

interesting but not yet!’ I was stunned.

I hadn’t been hung up on, ever...

What happened next?

About a month later, I got an email with

a time and a location in San Francisco.

It was a real adventure. I made my

way up to San Francisco and I was put

through the induction that you see in

the first episode. And when I finished

it, I got another email that said, ‘We’ve

been watching you. You have divine

nonchalance! And we’re giving you the

rights to this project.’

How did you conceive the other

characters?

I wanted to create four characters in

different states of existential crisis. I

wanted to paint them as differently

as possible, and then as an exercise

in empathy, ask viewers to picture

themselves as each one. My goal

is that by the end of the series, you

look at all four of those characters and

say, ‘Yes, that is me.’ And if we can

do that, then maybe we realise we’re

not all so different.

One character says ‘life without risk

is a tragedy’. Is that a motto for you?

Yes, I think so. A life un-experienced

is pretty sad and it doesn’t need to be

big. These people are just changing

their lives by going down an alley that

they normally pass by. ‘Gosh, there it

is – there is the mural that has existed

in my city for the whole time I’ve been

here and never noticed it.’ So you start

noticing these little acts of magic...

James Mottram

DISPATCHES FROM ELSEWHERE STARTS 29

APRIL ON AMC UK.

C

reated by Jason Segel, Dispatches From Elsewhere defies description.

But let’s try. The 10-episode series stars Segel as Peter who,

alongside three other lost souls (André Benjamin, Sally Field,

Eve Lindley) is sent on a scavenger hunt across Philadelphia by

a mysterious self-help group, the Elsewhere Society, in the hope of staving

off existential gloom. Weird doesn’t begin to cover it – but Segel is willing

to give us a steer...

SEE THIS

IF YOU

LIKED...

BEINGJOHN

MALKOVICH

FansofKaufman-

esquequirkwillfind

plentytoengagein

Dispatches

FORGETTING

SARAHMARSHALL





Segel’swriter/star

breakoutisa

highlymemorable

break-up-com

MANIAC



JonahHillandEmma

Stonegettrippyin

thistaleofa

mysterious

pharma-trial

AM

C

MAKING

OF

Segel

FieldandLindleyfind

themselvesgoingincircles

aroundPhiladelphia

GAMESRADARCOM/TOTALFILM APRIL 2020 | TOTAL FILM